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GOP on Obama speech: Told you so

For years, conservatives have called President Barack Obama a leftist radical hiding behind a moderate facade. If the country had only listened, the argument went, voters never would have elected him in the first place.

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Obama's Inaugural speech 2013

Obama includes Social Security, Medicare in Inaugural speech

POLITICO LIVE: Speech analysis

Forget the president’s talk about unity, of bringing together red states and blue states, of being a clear-minded pragmatist who wants to work with both parties, Republicans said after Obama’s unabashedly progressive speech to kick off his second term.

Monday’s address showed that all amounted to feel-good rhetoric to win votes, conservative commentators and lawmakers argued. Now that there is no more reelection, the true Obama has emerged, they said.

“The speech should debunk two myths about Mr. Obama and his presidency, both trumpeted by liberal commentators and Democratic activists,” conservative columnist Fred Barnes wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “One is that the president is really a pragmatist and a centrist. Not so. Only an ideologically committed liberal could have delivered the address that Mr. Obama did.

“The other myth is that Mr. Obama is eager to compromise with Republicans but has faced unprecedented obstructionism on their part. The speech told a different tale,” Barnes added. “It showed the president bent on pursuing an agenda with few if any sweeteners for Republicans.”

Brit Hume sounded a similar note on Fox News.

“President Obama today gave the country a clarifying moment. We may not have gotten to know Mr. Obama, the man, better today, but we certainly got to know him the politician better. His inaugural speech should put to rest for all time the notion much favored by his admirers in the press that he is a centrist. He is not,” Hume said. “The president clearly is a man of the left, and after today, his few departures from its orthodoxy should fool no one.”

And, standing before reporters on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell intoned, “One thing that was pretty clear from the president’s speech yesterday, the era of liberalism is back.”

If Obama’s 2004 convention speech – when he famously declared that, “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America” – was the singular moment when he burst onto the scene as a unifying force in politics, his inaugural speech was its inverse moment.

Standing before nearly 1 million people gathered on the National Mall, Obama gave a full-throated endorsement of liberalism – and indicated that he intended to break to the left in his second term. He highlighted agenda items that made liberals cheer, such as climate change and immigration reform. And Obama voiced his support for gay rights – indeed, it was the first time a president had used the word “gay” in an inaugural address.